Rye and cigars

Just ran across a nice article on rye and cigars. It is written by Jack Betteridge and can be found on www.cigaraficionado.com. It is under the heading The Spirit World. Some of you history purists will probably disagree with some of his statements but is a good article overall.

Re: Rye and cigars

The rye article is good, as is his ealier piece on bourbon. He does a good job.

His history of rye reminds me of something I was told years ago by an old whiskey salesman. He says that part of what happened to rye was that, during prohibition, people would sell the most god-awful concoctions, calling them "rye whiskey." They called them that because that was what most people wanted, because that was what most people considered good whiskey before prohibition. After 13-years of rot gut faux rye, people came to associate rye with something bad. After prohibition, nobody was interested in rye for that reason, and bourbon became more prominent.